


Hard Wired, Part II

by Muriel_Perun



Series: Hard Wired [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Developing Relationship, Loki makes everything hard for himself, M/M, Mention of Suicidal Ideation, Romance, past bullying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-01
Updated: 2017-11-04
Packaged: 2019-01-27 22:44:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12592176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muriel_Perun/pseuds/Muriel_Perun
Summary: The connection between Steve Rogers and Loki becomes suddenly closer, and Steve finally catches a glimpse of happiness. But Loki's past, and Odin's wrath, conspire against them.





	1. Chapter 1

Once he got up to the cabin things seemed a little simpler, but he couldn’t help thinking about what Loki had done, what he had let Loki do. Above all, he wondered what had been going through Loki’s head. Why had Loki come back in the first place? Had he really just wanted to tell Steve that he had been on the throne of Asgard?

Loki wanted him, of that he was sure—those kisses were no lie. But Loki had taken no pleasure. He had said, “I wanted to defile you so I could stop thinking about you.” Loki had reminded Steve that he would never see him again, had told Steve to forget him. And then he had done something humiliating to discourage Steve’s desire. Was Loki trying to spare him?

The first week at the cabin, it snowed a couple of feet, enough so that Steve could go snowshoeing and cross-country skiing. He’d get up at dawn, start his first pot of coffee, eat breakfast, and then he’d keep himself busy enough through the day that by dark he would read a few chapters of a book and then sleep through the night.

He decided that, if he ever saw Loki again, he would fight for another chance. Loki wouldn’t slip through his fingers next time.

***

One day, when Steve had been at the cabin a few weeks, Nat came to Steve’s door. It was unusual enough that Steve paused a moment in surprise before inviting her to enter.

They’d found his note, of course, and a series of frantic phone calls had followed, in which Tony tried to convince him to come back and to find out the reason for his departure. Steve remained vague, saying merely that he had some things to think about, that it was personal, nothing to do with the Avengers, and that he would return if the world or the city needed him. Now he wondered if Natasha had been send here to interrogate him.

He offered her a cup of coffee, and she accepted it, sitting on his second-hand sofa and looking around the room, a half smile on her face. “Wow, Steve, Tony told me you’d made yourself a love nest, but I’m just not seeing it. Maybe the satin sheets and the sex toys are upstairs. It just looks like a cabin to me.”

Steve laughed with her. After telling Steve to make himself a refuge, Tony was jealous of it. With all the money and power he had, he always wanted more. Natasha was being nicer to him than she had been since his friendship with Loki had been revealed. He wondered if she was putting him at ease to tell him something he wouldn’t want to hear. After all, he could be sure above all that this wasn’t just a social visit.

Trying not to sound rude, he asked, “So, Natasha, were you just out for a drive? Or do you have something to tell me?”

“It _is_ a nice drive,” she said, smiling, “but Bruce asked me to come. He sent this vaccination for you.” She pulled a slim case out of her bag and showed him the hypodermic needle inside.

“A vaccination?” he asked, surprised. “What for? I thought I was immune to everything.”

She shrugged. “I’m not the scientist, but Bruce thinks that Ebola might be a problem even for you. This is the new vaccine.”

“Why didn’t he come here to give it to me?” It might have been his imagination, but some shade seemed to lower in Natasha’s clear eyes, which were looking directly into his own. Or had he imagined it?

Nat shrugged. “I can ask him to come, if you’d rather,” she said. “If you don’t trust me. But you know how he feels about long car rides.”

Steve really had no reason to distrust her. He was trying to mend fences with the Avengers, not create more reasons for them to resent him. “I trust you, Nat,” he said, trying to put conviction into his voice, but he had to force it, if he told himself the truth, and he’d never heard of a vaccine that hurt this much going into your upper arm with the force of a solid object.

***

To pass the time in the evenings, Steve had a reading list that a librarian had helped him make when he told her he wanted to study the 1960s and 70s. Back at the tower, he had already worked his way through the 40s and 50s and early 60s, but now he was up to the Nixon administration. He had just finished _The Pentagon Papers_ , and the book he was reading now was called _All the President’s Men_. He was finding it hard going, not because it was especially difficult, but because he was having trouble believing that these things had happened in the United States of America, barely three decades after the end of World War II. Illegal wars, secret bombings, burglars, plumbers, smear campaigns—all these things had happened in his country. Not to mention assassinations and covert operations. Steve had wanted to catch up with the time he’d lost, but right now he was feeling very disappointed. At least resistance to recognizing the civil rights of minority groups and women had started lessening in the 60s. That was about the only glimmer of humanity he could see.

Sometimes the things he read about would be so overwhelming that he would stop and stare into space for a while before continuing, and those were the times he thought about Loki the most.

That’s what he was doing now—taking a break between chapters and idly staring out the window at the moonlight playing on the lake’s lightly rippled surface. It was a calm evening. He scratched at his upper arm, where, weeks before, Nat had given him that shot. It still felt uncomfortable, as if it hadn’t healed. He wondered uneasily, not for the first time, if the tip of the needle had broken off inside.

He heard a thump that shook the house and made dust sift down from the rafters. Grabbing a flashlight, he paused at the bottom of the stairs, wishing he had his shield. Going up the stairs two at a time, he stopped on the landing and looked around. His bedroom door was open, as was the bathroom. The guestroom door was closed. He stepped up, paused to listen, and opened it, turning on the light.

Breathing hard, a man was sitting on the floor, stripped to the waist. His armor, which lay in pieces around him, was scorched and dented. His unruly hair obscured half of his face, but Steve knew who it was all the same. He dropped to his knees.

Steve touched his arms, his face, looking for injury. “Are you all right?” His heart was pounding, his ears ringing. Was this real? Had he passed out? Loki’s chest was scored with burns, and his shoulders were raw. Where the metal armor had touched his skin, it was blistered. There was a terrible scar in the center of his chest, but that seemed to be healed. Steve remembered with a shock that Thor had reported that Loki had been stabbed in the chest by some sort of spear. “Let me get the first-aid kit.”

“Don’t bother. I’ll heal.” Loki leaned back against the bed and grinned. As Steve looked on in wonder, Loki passed a hand over each shoulder and suddenly the wounds were no longer so raw. “You see?”

“How did you get hurt? Are the Avengers after you?” Steve wondered why Loki had come back again after the way they’d parted.

“I was fighting the Warriors Three in Vanaheim and opened a way too quickly. I fell the last mile.” Steve had no idea what he was talking about. Loki laughed. “They won’t find me, at least not right away. I laid a false trail. It will take them days to unravel it.”

“How did you find me?”

Loki scoffed haughtily. “Magic. Why do you ask about things you can’t possibly understand?” He was picking up each damaged piece of armor and holding it in his gaze for a moment, so that when he placed it back on the rug it was no longer twisted and burned. Steve watched in fascination.

“What will you do if they find you?” Steve murmured.

“I have time,” Loki said lazily. “Once I leave, I can’t return for a long while.”

“Where will you go?”

“It’s better you don’t know,” Loki said, meeting his eyes. On the rug his armor gleamed in the lamplight, the metal once again bright and golden. “Odin has ways. After this last offense, he will never let me go unless I hide where he can never reach me. And—in case you’re thinking of it—you won’t have time to warn them before I’m far out of their reach.”

“I don’t care about that,” Steve said impatiently. “I’m not going to help them capture you. But I need to tell you something. I know why you did…that to me. The last time we met.” Loki looked at him uncertainly. “I was pretty mad at first, but I figured it out.”

Loki smiled, but he didn’t look happy. “Let’s not start that again. I just needed a place to catch my breath. I’m leaving now.”

“No,” Steve said angrily, “don’t you leave. Don’t you dare leave.” Before he even knew what he was doing, he had taken Loki’s face between his hands and kissed him.

He used his weight and the element of surprise to push Loki flat on the floor, running his hands over Loki’s bare chest. With one hand, he yanked his tee up and over his head, breaking the kiss for a mere second. And then his chest was up against Loki’s, skin to skin, as he had dreamed of it for years.

The kiss was a revelation, tongues and teeth and Loki’s strong lips yielding to him but showing him how to give the kiss a form, to keep lips from being bruised against teeth. But Steve wanted more. There was something he needed to do, and he didn’t want Loki to push him away or to take charge again. He broke his mouth away and kissed Loki’s face, holding his head still with fingers threaded through the silky black hair. Loki’s eyes were closed. He made a line of kisses down Loki’s neck, daring to nip at his collarbone, to suck against the sweet flesh and mark it with his teeth.

He kissed and licked his way across Loki’s chest, making Loki hiss in a breath when he sucked his nipples and pushed his tongue into his navel. And then his hands were on Loki’s pants, the green leather warm and pliable under his fingers, but he found no way to open them until Loki’s hand unfastened a hidden catch and then smoothed its way through his hair. Now Steve knew that Loki would let him do this.

Loki’s cock—hard and proud and uncut like his own, tawnier than his pale skin, standing out against his belly. Steve stroked, then tasted it, got on his knees and bent forward and slid it into his mouth. He had never heard Loki make a sound like that before, a cry of helpless rapture, almost a whimper, and _he_ had done this—Steve had given pleasure to Loki, enemy to the Avengers—ancient god, trickster, mass murderer, pretender to the throne of Asgard. Steve sucked at him, hearing his cries, _needing_ this to prove it hadn’t all been a lie. If Loki didn’t need him already, he would need him now, and Steve would show him how much.

He was learning as he went how to do this, taking his clues from Loki’s voice, his hands, the feel of his cock as it wept and grew hotter. Crying out, Loki raised his head and shoulders off the floor and took Steve’s head into both hands, and Steve swallowed him, holding off the urge to gag until the last of the semen had gone down his throat and Loki fell back heavily against the rug. His cock was still hard when Steve let it slip from his mouth. How many orgasms did it take to satisfy a god?

Steve moved up to lie on Loki and kiss him, but Loki pushed him over on his back and pulled his sweatpants off. For a second he contemplated Steve’s hardness—which made him even harder—and grinned. “My beautiful innocent,” Loki said softly, “I tried to spare you, but if you want me that much, there is a darkness in you. Let us explore it, shall we?”

Kneeling, he took Steve’s cock into his mouth and worked it so swiftly and hard that Steve shouted in surprise. If Loki hadn’t held down his hips with strong fingers, he would have risen off the floor, so hard did he writhe against this painful pleasure. He heard words tumbling from his lips—“Yes!” and “Fuck!” and “I want you!”—as if someone else were saying them. His mind wandered, lost in a maze of shock and lust as Loki sucked the life out of him. Loki’s powerful hands pushed against his thighs, forcing his legs back, and then Loki’s fingers—made slick by some substance conjured out of the air—were shoving into him, fucking him, giving him the pleasure he had always imagined, but the reality was more like a series of electric shocks than the sweet suffused languor he had dreamed of. Trembling, helpless under Loki’s touch, he broke into waves of bliss, crying out one final time, and subsided, panting, against the carpet.

But Loki hadn’t finished with him. As he moved forward, he raised Steve’s legs, spreading them wide and slinging them around his shoulders. His cock was poised at Steve’s opening, pushing against it, meaning to go inside. There was a question in Loki’s eyes. Steve laughed, still breathing hard, and whispered, “What part of ‘I want you’ don’t you understand?”

Loki bore into him all at once, and it hurt, god, it hurt, but it was glorious, too. While the hunters from Asgard closed in, Loki’s attention was all on _him_ , on fucking _him_.

“Your face—I have wanted to see your face while I fucked you,” Loki exulted. “You’re stunning. And you’re _mine_.”

Steve was gripping Loki’s shoulders as hard as he could, digging his fingers in when Loki swiveled his hips _that_ way—the way that made Steve moan and forget to breathe. “Hold me down,” he said in a strangled voice. “Hold me down and take me.”

Loki understood, wrenching Steve’s hands from their death-grip on his shoulders and forcing them back against the floor. Steve struggled, but Loki was implacable. Steve had never been so turned on in his life.

“Ah, there it is,” Loki gloated. “There’s your darkness.” He breathed out forcefully and came, touching his forehead to Steve’s for a moment, but he never stopped moving. His cock was still as stiff as before.

It was even better now, now that Steve couldn’t move, couldn’t change a thing about what was happening to him. He had awoken the tiger, and he had meant to. Loki hadn’t been sure if it was real either; he had tried to spare Steve, to leave without taking him, but he couldn’t resist. _Loki couldn’t resist._ And now he was as caught up in this as Steve was. Steve twisted, opening his legs and pulling with them to get Loki deeper inside him. He didn’t want it to end.

Steve came so long and so hard he felt suspended in another world, as if he were passing through fire this time instead of ice. And when he came back to himself, he was a different man.

Loki came once more, allowing Steve to watch his face this time. Letting go of Steve’s wrists, Loki slid into his arms and sighed. At that sound Steve felt a wave of happiness rush through him. This was what he wanted. Fuck Tony, and Clint, and Nat and their judgments. Fuck Thor and his worries. Fuck everybody. This was where Steve belonged.


	2. Chapter 2

Steve awoke slowly, aware of Loki’s body pressed full-length against his back and ass and legs, as they lay together in the small guest bed, Loki’s strong arm around his chest, holding him close. It morning now, and it was cold in the room, but he didn’t mind; it was warm enough with just the sheet over the two of them. He remembered that the radio had predicted snow. Snow always fell so silently. He wondered lazily if it had started already, blanketing the hills and the frozen lake in a clean layer of white.

He drowsed and woke again, dimly aware of a low rumbling in the distance. It stopped, started again. Maybe that’s what had awakened him. Thunder. He had always loved to lie in bed and listen to the thunder. Long ago, his mother had read him the story of Rip Van Winkle, and he had been fascinated by the thought of the little men playing ninepins in the mountains. Were they elves or something? He couldn’t remember. He just knew that when they knocked down the pins, it made the sound of thunder. Come to think of it, he was a bit like Rip Van Winkle himself, sleeping through the years, awakening in another time....

Loki stirred behind him. “No,” he said softly. “No!” The second word was forceful, angry. Loki jumped to his feet and sprang to the window, looking out anxiously.

“What’s wrong?” Steve asked sleepily. “It’s just thunder.” But it couldn’t be thunder. It was the dead of winter. They were predicting blizzards, not thunderstorms. “That sound,” he began, rising to join Loki at the window. “What was it?”

“It is the Bifrost,” Loki said through clenched teeth. His grip was iron around Steve’s bicep. “You betrayed me! How did you do it? You kept me here, you let me fuck you, to give them time to—”

“I wouldn’t do that!” Steve shook him off, stepping back. “Why would you think that?” The fuzz had left his brain and he shook with anger to think that Loki would accuse him of such a thing. “I betrayed _them_ for you! I would never—”

“I’ll die before I’ll go back to Odin’s prison,” Loki spat. He waved a hand, and all the pieces of his clothing and armor rose up from every corner of the room in a green and gold whirlwind, and suddenly he was clothed.

“Loki, I didn’t—” Steve began, but Loki interrupted.

“You’ve killed me,” he snarled, “I should—” He laughed suddenly. “All that false innocence, that passion. What a perfect trap for me. What a perfect _lie_.”

“It wasn’t false, and it wasn’t a trap,” Steve insisted, stepping towards him. “I don’t know how they found you.” Loki shoved Steve away so hard he stumbled.

“Are you lying, or self-deluded?” he asked viciously. When he pointed a finger at the window, the sash slammed up, letting a blast of ice-cold air into the room. He stepped up on the sill. Steve heard the whine of a quinjet outside.

“Wait, don’t go,” Steve said desperately. “They’ll shoot you down. Let me talk to them. I can—”

But Loki had already launched himself into the air, arms outspread, and, before Steve’s astonished eyes, transformed into a large black bird, whose magnificent feathers flashed black and steel blue against the snow. He rose quickly, flying over the trees towards the frozen lake.

Steve watched, trying to still his panic, his breath billowing out like waves into the freezing air. The sky had that vaguely greenish tinge he remembered from his childhood, when he had gone to bed hoping for snow, for a respite from school so he could lie in bed and read wild adventure stories: science fiction, fairy tales, mythology, stories of King Arthur and his knights, Rider Haggard, Robert Louis Stevenson, all those improbable tales, and now he was living one....

From the trees below Steve’s window, a small object spiraled up into the leaden sky. Loki was over the lake now, his great wings flapping madly as he tried to escape. Adrenaline squeezed Steve’s heart. Mjolnir. The projectile was Thor’s hammer, meant to bring Loki down.

Again Steve heard a familiar whine as a quinjet flew low over the lake and came in for a landing on the shore. A group of people, too distant to identify, was coming out of the woods and gathering out on the ice, looking at the sky.

The hammer found its mark. Steve flinched involuntarily as he watched it knock Loki out of his desperate flight. A dark streak stained the sky, a smoky vapor trail over the lake. Loki was falling, transforming from bird to man as he fell, trying to flap his wings and fly.

Frantically, Steve rummaged through the crumpled bedclothes to find his sweatpants and pull them on. In seconds he was down the stairs and out the front door, sprinting for the forest. On the porch he grabbed the lid from the garbage can that held the kindling, wishing desperately that he had brought his shield.

As Steve sped down the treacherous trail, lined with rocks and patches of ice, a memory popped into his panicked mind from the children’s bible his mother had read him. Lucifer, twisted, scorched by god’s wrath, his long hair whipping around his shoulders, falling from heaven to hell. Lucifer, with his broken wings, one white, and one shriveled and black, half of his face so handsome, the other wizened and dark. Steve redoubled his pace, gasping for breath, muscles pumping, a cold pool of fear gathering in his chest.

Breaking from the trees, he ran out onto the icy beach, slipping and sliding dangerously as he tried to slow his breakneck pace, only then realizing that he was barefoot. Loki smashed down on the lake about 30 feet from shore with a sickening thud, landing so hard that Steve heard the ice crackling under him. He held his breath, fearing that Loki would break through into the freezing water beneath. Minute cracks spread swiftly around the point of impact, transforming the inlet’s blue ice to a uniform milky white. No one could survive that fall. No one.

“Don’t be dead,” he heard himself whisper. The landscape blurred and he shook his head angrily. Loki was strong, nearly immortal. Steve wouldn’t believe the worst unless he had seen it for himself.

Steve started to step out onto the ice until he saw one of Loki’s pursuers dragging him by both feet towards the shore where Steve stood waiting. The Asgardian, a bearded behemoth of a man, dumped Loki’s body unceremoniously on the rocky ground at Steve’s feet. Loki lay sprawled on his back, his features partly hidden by his dark, tangled mane of hair. Steve couldn’t tell if he was breathing. He knelt, lifting Loki’s head to cushion it on his thighs, and brushed the dark tangles from his lover’s face. Loki’s face was horribly mangled over one cheekbone, livid and swollen, but he was bleeding, and didn’t that mean he was alive? Steve thought of broken bones, of paralysis, brain damage. He didn’t know what to do. Even if Loki still lived, how could Steve keep the others from killing him or taking him away? Whoever was in that quinjet, Avengers or S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, was probably not going to be an ally. Steve knew that Thor was here, but how could that help? Thor had hit Loki in the face with Mjolnir, so determined was he to send his brother back to Odin’s jail.

The others arrived, one by one, from wherever they had been waiting, surrounding the house, and stood staring as Steve cupped Loki’s cold face in both hands, hoping, against all evidence, to wake him. Thor stood the closest, as if standing guard, looking down at Loki with anguish painted plainly on his face. Across from him were four Asgardians—three men and a woman, all dressed in battle armor with weapons in their hands. Tony landed a few yards away, opened his visor and walked up to stand with Thor. Clint stood back, towards the quinjet, holding his bow with an arrow in it. Natasha was there, too, a short way off to their left, staring at the Asgardians with her cool, inscrutable eyes.

Loki opened his eyes, took a deep ragged breath, and pulled himself out of Steve’s grasp, rolling over onto his side on the hard, cold ground and taking a fetal position. Steve wasn’t sure how to help him, or if that were even possible. He looked up and realized that he was in the middle of a faceoff between Asgard and Avengers, with Thor in the Avengers’ camp. He stood slowly, picking up the garbage can lid, and stood beside Thor.

The woman warrior stepped forward, brandishing her sword. “Stand aside,” she said firmly to Thor, “and let us finish the one who has dishonored the All-Father.”

“Sif, you know I will not do that,” Thor said wearily, without anger. “I must return Loki to Asgard.”

“And if the rest of us do not agree?” she asked, her eyes flashing. Steve took an instant dislike to her cold self-righteousness. He spoke up, attracting her blazing eyes to him. “If you came here to take him back to prison, that’s one thing, but you’re not going to kill him,” he said firmly.

As the woman scrutinized him, Steve starting feeling ridiculous in his sweatpants, with bare chest and feet, holding an aluminum garbage can lid, while he looked at her leather armor and bright sword.

“My comrade,” Thor said to Steve, “I would gladly fight at your side, but you would be in grave danger here. Perhaps you should...”

“I’m not here to fight,” Steve told him grimly, watching the woman’s eyes settle on his shoulder and widen, as the angry line of her mouth compressed and thinned. He glanced down and was horrified to see the livid contusions, obviously caused by teeth, trailing down his chest. There was no more doubt in anyone’s mind about what Loki and he had been doing. He blushed furiously with embarrassment and anger.

“What was Loki doing here?” the woman asked Steve imperiously. “What did he do to you?”

First he considered not answering her impertinent question, but everyone seemed to be leaning in, waiting for him to speak. He thought of saying “nothing”—but that was a lie—or “nothing I didn’t want”—but that was defensive and too revealing. Then he remembered that they had come into his world and effectively pulled Loki out of his bed.

“With all the respect in the world, ma’am,” Steve said evenly, “that’s really none of your business.”

“Steve Rogers,” Thor said with an edge of displeasure in his voice that Steve knew was not aimed at him, “may I present the Lady Sif?”

Steve wasn’t really very glad to meet her under the circumstances, but his upbringing didn’t allow him to ignore an introduction to a lady. “Ma’am,” he said, nodding briefly.

“Are you conspiring with him?” Sif asked contemptuously. “Why else would you harbor him in your home?”

“It’s not like that, ma’am,” Steve retorted. “Loki came to see me, to rest. He didn’t think you’d be able to find him so soon.”

Tony broke in impatiently. “He’s controlling you, the way he controlled Clint and Eric.” His voice was tense and low. “And of course you’re going to deny it.”

“Is that what you think?” Steve asked, stung. “Really? How could he do that without the scepter?”

“We don’t know what Loki can do,” Tony retorted quickly. “But we do know that he was visiting you, that you were protecting him for a whole year when he was coming to see you at the Tower.”

“Thor knew about it. Was he controlling Thor, too?” Steve snapped.

“You were leader of the Avengers. You were supposed to be our strategic thinker, but did you ever think of what else Loki might have done in the Tower? Did he compromise the Iron Legion? Or check out our security setup? How else can I explain it to you? Either you lost your mind, or he took it from you.”

Steve noted Tony’s use of the past tense, and realized that, the angrier he got, the more bridges he burned. “How many times do I have to tell you that he was just a projection, that he couldn’t affect anything in our world?” Steve took a deep breath. If the majority of the warriors here decided that Loki had to die, could he and Thor fight them off? It suddenly occurred to him just how many of Loki’s enemies were present here, in this obscure corner of upstate New York, and he wondered why. “How did you find him, anyway? Were you staking out my house?”

No one spoke, but over to his left, Natasha breathed out audibly, making him glance at her face. She was looking at him, her eyes large and luminous, her breath visible in the cold air. Her expression was expectant, as if she were trying to tell him something.

“Loki thinks I betrayed him,” Steve said slowly, still looking at Natasha, “but I didn’t—or at least I didn’t mean to. Maybe somehow you made sure I did.”

Natasha considered him, her face a mask, her eyes revealing nothing. She glanced at his arm and then back into his eyes. A chill ran through his body, and it wasn’t from the cold.

“Give me your knife,” Steve said softly.

Bending, she reached into her boot and pulled it out, flicking it to him. He caught it deftly, ignoring the approval in Lady Sif’s eyes. With the knife’s keen tip he sliced into his left arm at the spot where the needle had gone in, the spot where he’d had that vague feeling of unease all these months. From the thin cut the blood ran slowly down to his elbow, and he let it drip freely on the ice as he searched through the wound. There it was: a dark speck, a flat oval that didn’t belong in his flesh. He pulled it out on the tip of the knife.

“What’s this?” he asked, turning from Natasha to Tony and back again.

“It’s a chip,” Natasha said evenly. “Now that it’s served its purpose, you might as well know.”

Steve felt a fool. “It told you when Loki was near me.” Natasha nodded once without taking her eyes off him. “You lied to me,” he said.

“I had to,” she said smoothly. “We knew you wouldn’t tell us if he came back.”

“We were protecting you from yourself.” Tony hissed. “This isn’t like you.”

Steve scoffed. “It’s not like me to take a lover? To do something that you don’t approve of? You don’t know me. None of you know me.” He realized it was true. They had lived and fought together, but they were strangers.

At his feet Loki stirred, sitting up and running his hands through his knotted hair to push it back from his face. Amazed that he could move at all, Steve squatted down and their eyes met. “You see this?” Steve asked, showing him the chip on the end of the bloody knife. “They stuck it in my arm. They used it to find you. I didn’t know what it was. I’m sorry.” Placing the chip on a rock, he took another rock and crushed it to powder.

Loki smiled crookedly. His left eye was swollen almost closed now. Reaching out, he grabbed Steve’s shoulders and pulled him close to speak into his ear. “Do you want me to stay with you?” he whispered, his voice a mere thread of sound.

Steve’s heart quickened. “Yes, but how can you—”

“Shhh. There is a way. Just follow my lead. Stand up now, and wait.”

When he stood he saw that another person had joined their group. Nick Fury must have been in the quinjet with Natasha and Clint.

“Captain,” Fury said, nodding.

Steve nodded briefly, trying not to look at Loki, waiting for him to make a move. What could the two of them possibly do against so many? Was Loki so badly injured he was deluding himself? Or had Loki thought of something impossibly clever, some trick that even his countrymen couldn’t foresee?

Thor laid a heavy hand on Steve’s shoulder, startling him out of his thoughts. “We must take him now, my friend.”

“How could you knock him out of the sky like that?” Steve asked painfully. “You could have killed him.”

“I did not want to injure him, but I am sworn to take him back to Odin’s prison.” Speaking louder, Thor addressed the others. “My friends, I intend to return Loki to prison in Asgard. I trust that none of you will try to hinder my purpose.”

“He’s your brother,” Steve said in a low, tight voice, hoping that the others could not hear, “and if you believe that he was controlled during the Battle of New York, then why—”

He stopped, looking down in shock. Loki had grabbed his ankles, one in each hand, and bowed his head, so that his hair trailed across Steve’s bare feet. “I beg asylum in the house of Steve Rogers,” Loki said hoarsely.

“No, Loki!” Thor shouted, “do not involve him in this. The All-Father will—”

“I grant Loki asylum in my house,” Steve said staunchly, wondering what he was getting himself into. This was his fault for not questioning what Natasha was putting into his arm. It was up to him to fix it.

“Thor, you cannot let this happen!” The Lady Sif was furious, looking up into Thor’s face. One hand was on her hip; the other gripped her weapon until her knuckles were white.

“What do you expect me to do about it?” he snapped, hardly looking at her. “Asylum is a matter of honor.” He had turned to Steve and Loki. “Did you and Loki plan this?” he asked angrily.

“No,” Steve replied simply, he felt his face flush with anger at being accused. He desperately wanted to ask Loki what this “asylum” meant, since the stricken, angry looks of all the Asgardians seemed to have a deeper motivation than the obvious one. Loki’s head was still bowed, although he had released Steve’s ankles, so Steve could get no clue from his eyes. Thor shook his head and stalked over to talk to his friends.

Then suddenly Tony was shaking Steve by the arm. “Hey, Cap, do you know what you’re doing here? Because I think the best thing would be to let Thor take him back to jail.” Since Tony had removed his glove, Steve was able to pull out of his grasp.

“Do you really care?” Steve didn’t want to sound like that, but he’d had it with people accusing him, manipulating him, and that included Tony and Loki. He was way out of his depth here, and everyone else seemed to be, too. Thor and Tony were distraught; Natasha, having let Steve know the extent of their betrayal, was staying out of things; and the Asgardians were prowling around aimlessly, angrily, speaking in low voices among themselves, with occasional glances Steve’s way. Only Loki, lying on the ground with his face bruised to a pulp, seemed to have some modicum of control over this situation. Steve wished someone would bring him up to date on what he had just committed to, but he didn’t think that would happen anytime soon.

“Of course we care. What made you think we didn’t?”

Shocked at Tony’s denseness, Steve hardly knew where to start. “Why did you make that thing and ask Natasha to put it in my arm? What not just ask me about Loki?”

“I didn’t ask her to do it. That was Fury. And if we’d told you, would you have given him up?”

“No,” Steve admitted. He turned and looked Tony straight in the face. “I noticed you didn’t deny making the chip.” Tony’s lips tightened, but he didn’t look away. “If you’re still my friend, you have to let me do this, you have to support me. I have reasons.”

“Jeez, Cap, you can’t be serious about taking Loki into your home. And you’re sleeping with him now? Don’t you remember what he did, how we fought him, how many people he killed? How did he get into your head like that? Dammit, I know he’s controlling you like he controlled Barton.”

Frustrated, Steve shook his head. “He’s not controlling me. I know what he did—I was there. Listen, Tony, what if Loki was controlled by someone else when he did all those things? What then?” Thor had left the other Asgardians and was coming back towards them. “Before he’s condemned to spend the rest of his life in a dungeon, shouldn’t we figure that out?” he asked urgently.

“He told you that? Steve, come on, he’s the God of Lies.”

“Ask Thor. He knows. If he was coerced, then life imprisonment isn’t just.”

Thor stopped before him and gestured to Loki. “Take him now. He is safe for the moment, but do not try to leave the house.”

“We’re prisoners?” Steve asked indignantly. “What if we need food, or—”

“Have someone bring it to you,” Thor said curtly. “Captain, I have kept my friends from taking or killing Loki for now. A request for asylum cannot be treated lightly, and Loki knew this when he asked for it. You might have a few weeks, but at some point, Odin will revoke the asylum and send me to get Loki. Unless you want to die with him, you will surrender him to me then.”

“You almost killed him yourself just now,” Steve countered angrily. “How could you hit him in the face with Mjolnir, when you knew what it would do?”

“Loki is much stronger than you know. I regret having to injure him, but I am sworn to return him to prison. You have interfered with things you cannot possibly understand.”

“But you told me yourself that he was mind controlled when he—”

As Steve started to speak, Thor held up a hand to stop him. “It doesn’t matter. Odin knew that when he decreed Loki’s punishment. Take him now. I know you care for him. Make the most of the time you have.”

“Don’t worry about anything,” Tony said suddenly at Steve’s shoulder. “I’ll have food sent to you. A truck will arrive this afternoon.” In his typically contrary way, Tony had now sided with the underdog.

They all watched as Steve squatted down and gently pulled Loki to his feet, but Loki felt boneless in his arms, utterly without strength and close to unconsciousness. Steve had no choice but to carry him. He’d always known Loki had a couple of inches on him, but he’d also thought that he had 30 or 40 pounds on Loki. Now, as he hoisted Loki’s inert form into his arms, he realized that, despite appearances, Loki weighed more than he should have, as if Asgardians were made of denser stuff.

Feeling all those eyes on his back, he walked quickly up the slope and through the trees. He was starting to notice the pain from his feet—frozen, bruised, and bleeding from the jagged rocks on the trail and the thick ice he had stood on for so long. But he tried to show no weakness as he carried Loki up the front steps into the house, kicking the door shut behind him, and went directly up the stairs into his own bedroom.

He laid Loki gently on the floor and removed his armor, then his clothes, before putting him in bed. The wounds on Loki’s face seemed to need attention, but as he went into the bathroom to get some first aid supplies, he glanced out the window and saw Nick Fury walking deliberately up the path to the house.

Steve went quickly downstairs and slipped out the door, meeting Fury on the porch. He had no intention of inviting him inside.

“What are you doing here?” he asked rudely, as Fury mounted the porch steps. “Why is S.H.I.E.L.D. involved in helping Asgard hunt down a fugitive?”

“I can’t tell you that.” Fury laughed softly. “You’re not a player anymore Steve. You pulled yourself out of the game.”

“And yet here you are talking to me as if I had something you wanted.” Steve was tired and frustrated and worried about Loki. He had the feeling he was burning bridges one after another, and he didn’t know where he stood with S.H.I.E.L.D., with the Avengers, with Asgard—any of it. His wounded feet had been numb with cold and now they were starting to hurt. “Why don’t you just tell me what it is? I’m not going to stand here and play games with you.”

Fury spread his hands out, palms up, in his typical disarming gesture. “It’s upstairs,” he drawled, “and I doubt you’ll have it for long. I don’t suppose it would do any good to ask you to turn Loki over to us at the end of this ‘asylum,’ instead of to Asgard?”

“I don’t intend to turn him over to anyone,” Steve said, “least of all S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“From what Thor said, you might not have much choice,” Fury smiled.

Steve knew Fury was probably right, but he wasn’t going to admit it. “You want Loki? Take a number,” he said curtly. “And now I need to get back to my guest.”

 


	3. Chapter 3

After checking on Loki, who seemed fast asleep, Steve took a long, hot shower and dressed in clean sweats. His feet were already starting to heal, and so were the bruises and cuts on Loki’s face, so he decided to leave them both alone.

An hour later, a delivery van pulled up in front of the house and delivered enough frozen dinners to fill Steve’s freezer and enough cans of soup and chili and other necessities to fill his pantry, courtesy of Tony, of course. Steve wished things had been better between them. Maybe they would be again. This was the kind of oversized gesture Tony typically made as an apology.

He heated some soup and made a sandwich and a pot of coffee, changed the sheets on the guestroom bed and did a load of laundry, and then he took his book and his coffee upstairs and sat in the armchair near Loki, watching his sleeping face as the sky darkened and snow started to fall silently outside. He heard the distant sound of the Bifrost again, and saw a group of shadowy figures take up places in a circle around the house. There they stood in the falling snow, hands clasped at their waists. It seemed to him that they were all women, but it was hard to tell. Steve dozed and woke in his chair, glancing out occasionally to see if they were still there. When the night grew so obscure, the falling snow so thick, that he could no longer see anything, he stripped off his clothes and climbed into bed with Loki, where he fell asleep immediately and slept until well after dawn.

***

A day went by, and then another. Steve felt completely alone, watching Loki sleep. At times it snowed silently, covering the landscape, dimming every sound, changing the lay of the land, even hiding the lake, making Steve feel that he’d been transported to some strange land, away from everything he knew, where the only constant was the chanting women gathered in a circle around the house, their voices a murmur that could have been distant ocean waves.

Each day the purple and black bruises faded a bit from Loki’s skin. He roused only to turn over and sleep again. Steve wondered if he would ever really wake, or if the fall had irreparably damaged him. Maybe Loki had managed only to say the few words that would prevent Thor from taking him back to Asgard. Maybe he wanted to die free, away from his prison cell. Steve feared that he would never hear Loki’s voice again.

He wondered how this would end, and yet he never regretted for an instant his decision to stand up for himself, for what he wanted, for what he thought was right. Loki had been branded a criminal, and, if he lived, eventually Odin would take him back to prison. But until then Steve would protect him.

At night, Steve undressed and slept curled behind him, as if shielding him from the world, from the forces that wanted to take him, kill him, tear him out of Steve’s arms. If Loki noticed Steve there, he didn’t show it.

Steve grew restless. During the day he read, and he cooked, tidied the house, made and drank pot after pot of coffee. He stoked the fire in the stove, glad that there was plenty of wood on the porch. He had no desire for the moment to defy Thor’s warning not to venture further than that. He spent hours watching at the window. And then, after three full days, in the morning, when he woke, the women had gone. 

As he stood at the window, he felt a presence and found Loki standing next to him, gaunt and pale, but alive. Steve laid a hand on him to make sure he was really there and Loki leaned into him. For a few moments they stared out together at the bleak winter landscape.

“The _völver_ were here,” Loki murmured.

“The chanting women?” Steve said. “What were they doing?”

“Weaving a cage,” Loki answered. “Now I must cast a spell to undo theirs.” Waving a hand, he clothed himself in all his armor and knelt by the window, closing his eyes. Softly, in some language Steve did not know, he chanted, rocking slowly to and fro, his hands held out before him. Steve retreated to the armchair and waited.

When Loki finally rose, his grim face showed that he had failed. “I have chanted the _galdr_ nine times, but too many worked on the weaving of this spell. The threads will not part. None of those women is a match for me, but together...” he trailed off. “Frigga taught me well, and then she taught them how to defend against me.” He shrugged. “It was wise of her.”

Steve couldn’t quite read his face. He expected to see the anger there, but also he saw resignation, or—that wasn’t quite it—regret, or perhaps Loki was just remembering his mother, how he had loved her and how she exasperated him. And how well she knew him, so that she gave him great power but didn’t quite trust him to use it well.

“I must take nourishment,” Loki said, breaking into Steve’s thoughts.

“Of course,” Steve said, realizing that he had never seen Loki eat, in fact didn’t even know if Loki did eat.

Loki must have read it on his face, because he laughed. “Of course I need to eat,” he said.

They had sandwiches and tomato soup from a can, washed down with coffee, and Loki wolfed it down and asked for more.

***

Two more days went by, when all they did was eat and sleep and have an occasional conversation, but Loki didn’t seem to be in a talking mood. He passed hours brooding or chanting by the window, looking out at the deep drifts of snow that sparkled under the winter sun. Eventually he stopped spending the days wearing his full armor, choosing instead soft green clothing that looked and felt to Steve like silk. Steve didn’t understand where it came from, but he didn’t ask.

Despite Thor’s warning, Steve finally dared to clear a path from the porch to the woodpile, where he split enough wood to last them for a month, and piled it up neatly around the porch, covered securely by tarps to keep it dry. He needed something to use his energy on, because, since his awakening, Loki had shown no interest in touching him.

One morning, Steve awoke to find Loki sitting cross-legged by the window. As usual, it seemed he had been there all night. Steve went to the bathroom, and when he came back, Loki was standing, his back to the window, with a strange expression on his face that Steve couldn’t place. It could have been self-deprecation, and it could have been bitterness, but, sad as Loki seemed, Steve also realized that Loki was looking at him with a new intensity of interest, his head cocked to one side.

“I’ve failed,” he said. “The spell will not break.”

“So, now what?” Steve asked, wondering what new tack Loki would take in his quest to escape.

Loki shrugged. “I must accept it and do something different.”

“I’m sorry,” Steve murmured, vaguely disappointed, and not at all sure what Loki was trying to tell him. “I’ll make coffee.”

In the kitchen, as he went through the familiar motions, he felt more let down than ever. What had happened to their friendship? He couldn’t blame Loki for trying to escape, but he had expected something different, some kind of closeness.

Steve was no stranger to disappointed expectations. Absurdly, he thought of the kids in the Brooklyn neighborhood where he grew up. They always had a new trick to pull on him, and he was so needy for friendship, he fell for them all. “Ya want some candy, Shrimpy? I got some candy here.” He only said “yes” once in trusting innocence, until he learned the condition. They wanted him to humiliate himself—pull down his pants, show them his dick. Shocked, he had turned away from them, sad and ashamed. And after that he was always the kid who said “no” to free candy, the stupid, shrimpy kid...the skinny retard....

Mounting the stairs, Steve pushed the bedroom door open with his elbow, intent on the steaming cups of coffee in his hands. When he looked up towards the night table he stopped, paralyzed by what he saw. A speck of burn touched his knuckle and he realized his hands were trembling hard enough to agitate the hot liquid into a miniature storm. As quickly as he could, he set the cups down on the desk, slopping a little coffee over the sides, and turned his eyes quickly back to the bed, afraid it had been a mirage or a spell, that what he had seen wouldn’t be there for him anymore.

Loki lay against the pillows, naked, his gaze languid and yet focused, intent. He looked at once relaxed and tense with expectation. His cock was hard, jutting out into the air, while one hand lay quiescent on his thigh, but it was as if that hand and Loki’s cock together formed an equation potent with meaning, the answer to a question Steve hadn’t been aware of asking.

“Do you want something?” Loki asked with a sly smile. His voice was throatier and darker than usual. His head was tipped to one side and all his attention was focused on Steve’s face.

Steve’s erection had tented out his shorts. He could feel it there straining against the fabric. He opened his mouth to speak. “I... I want....” His voice broke, losing its force as his throat closed against the words that pushed out of his chest, straining to be heard, tying his tongue in a tangle of shame.

“Tell me.” Loki’s chuckle was low, his voice a whisper. “Tell me what you want.”

_Was this a trap? Would Loki offer him this only to laugh at him and take it away?_

But this wasn’t mean kids and candy. This was...something else. Something he wanted with a force that made his hands clench and his balls ache and his mouth dry with desire. Loki lifted the hand off his thigh and ran one finger slowly up his cock. Steve shuddered hard and a sound came from his throat.

“Yes? You were saying?”

“I want to watch you—” Steve stopped himself. What was the matter with him? This wasn’t something he could ask for. This was perverted, dirty. This was—

“Do you want to watch me pleasure myself?” Loki asked, smiling a knowing, wolfy smile. Steve nodded, amazed. “And what after that?”

The words came out all at once. “I want to fuck you,” Steve said it louder than he had planned, hearing the gravel in his voice as if the words had torn in their struggle to fly out of him.

“Yes,” Loki purred, “you want to fuck me till I lose control of myself, don’t you? He laughed softly. “I want that, too.” Steve took a step forward. “Wait,” Loki said, holding up a hand. “First, watch.”

Lying back, he took hold of his cock and stroked it hard, pulling the foreskin back a little and smiling, knowing his arousal showed on his face. He tugged at it slowly, then fast, then slowly again, caressing it from stem to tip with thumb and forefinger, then just the head. His breath caught in his throat; his eyes glazed over. “Steve,” he said, calling him by name for almost the first time, “Steve”—a whispered appeal.

It hurt to wait, to watch, and yet Steve needed it. He needed to watch until all he could do was act. Without taking his eyes away for more than a second, he pulled off his t-shirt, tugged down his shorts and kicked them off, moved towards Loki and laid hands on him, pushing him flat on the bed.

“You earned this,” Loki whispered. “I have been betrayed so many times, but not by you.”

There was lube in Steve’s hand and he didn’t know how it came there, but he slicked himself and shoved blindly forward, until Loki guided him. In two thrusts he was inside. Loki’s head snapped back, eyelids fluttering in arousal as Steve pushed in deep, awkward at first until he found his rhythm, then smooth and inexorable.

Steve thought of slowing down, of making it last, but Loki spread his legs and grabbed Steve’s ass, and then they were scrabbling across the bed and off the side, tangled on the floor, rutting wildly, until Loki cried out, and Steve cried out, too. They ended panting and laughing and kissing until Steve could go again, and after he had fucked Loki a second time, Loki turned the tables.

All day they made love, and in late afternoon they showered, and ate some of Tony’s provisions, and then they lay kissing and touching each other until they finally slept. And in the middle of the night they awoke and did it all again.

Steve had been dimly aware that the serum had increased his sexual endurance, but this was the first time he had been able to enjoy it. He had wanted Loki for so long, and here he was. Steve had finally gotten something, someone he wanted.

***

Steve was madly in love, completely besotted by this strange creature who had suddenly turned all his considerable charm and attention on Steve. Forgotten were the six days when he had waited for Loki to awaken and then to finish his attempt on the spell that held him in this place. Returned were all Steve’s dreams and fantasies, only they were better now, clearer. He knew now that this was what he’d wanted all this time: this intimacy, this physical and mental closeness. For Loki hadn’t just opened the mysteries of sex to him, he was once again talking revealingly about himself.

Even when they had been friends before, Steve had never expected Loki to be this open, this apparently carefree. He had expected more superiority, more secrets, more derision. He knew, of course, that they were living in a sort of bubble that would only subsist as long as Odin chose not to pop it, and because of that Loki really couldn’t do anything besides remain in this place where Asgardian magic had trapped him.

But he could have brooded over his failure to escape, as Steve had expected him to. That he hadn’t seemed to Steve the best gift that life had ever given to him. Loki was teaching Steve the art of love, talking to him as a more experienced man, but also, surprisingly, as an equal. Life had taken Bucky, a blow that Steve had still not forgiven or forgotten, but now it had given him Loki.

Some days, they made love madly, over and over, as if it were their final day; other times, they touched each other with a languid voluptuousness, as if they had all the time in the world. Loki showed Steve how to give pleasure with his hands, then without his hands. He taught him how to kiss in a dozen different moods. He spent a day on the art of oral sex, and Steve repaid him by making him come so gradually that Loki was crying out desperately by the time he came, cursing Steve for learning his lesson too well.

“I’m making a courtesan out of you,” he laughed, mouthing Steve’s shoulder and licking up to his ear, making Steve fidget with the arousal that had built up as he had attended to Loki. Now Loki pretended to ignore his need, but Steve knew he was aware of it. “If being an Avenger stops working for you, you could try another profession.” He laughed softly as he teased Steve’s chest with gentle touches of his fingertips.

Losing patience, Steve pushed Loki over and lay on top of him, moving hard against him, and trying to raise his legs and mount him. But Loki flipped him over easily and held his arms down.

“Oh, no,” he said softly, grinning as Steve struggled, “it’s my turn now to make you suffer.” He proceeded to move his body slowly, almost imperceptibly, against Steve’s erection, while Steve swore and protested, but ended by being so turned on by being restrained that it didn’t take all that long for him to find release.

“A courtesan?” he said later, as they lay quietly together. “What’s the difference between a courtesan and a consort?”

“A courtesan takes money or favors for it. A consort is a spouse, a companion to a prince, but one who has no rights to the throne if the prince dies. Only the prince and his heirs have a right to the throne.”

“Have you ever taken a consort?” Steve asked, almost shyly. He felt way out of his depth with Asgardian customs.

“No. I had just reached the age when I would have been ‘encouraged’ to chose one—someone worthy of producing heirs to the throne and a companion capable of taming my ‘wild ways’—when…everything…happened.”

“What about Thor?” Steve asked, hoping he wasn’t touching a sore spot.

“Ah, Thor,” Loki said moodily, rolling on his back and cushioning his head on his arms. “He hasn’t chosen anyone yet, which makes me think that he wishes to take the mortal Jane as his consort. Either she won’t have him, or Odin has forbidden it. Either way, it’s clear that Odin still wishes him to take Sif as his own true love, and produce many healthy male children to succeed their father, once his ruling days are done. As for me, it wouldn’t much have mattered who I chose. I was never getting near the throne in any case, as long as Odin had anything to say about it, which, as it turned out, he didn’t.” During this speech, Loki went from annoyed to speculative, and then to amusement. Loki’s mood changes fascinated Steve, and also frightened him.

“And does Lady Sif want him?” Steve asked, after a brief hesitation.

“Desperately,” Loki replied, grinning now. “She has since we were children together. It infuriated her no end when she found out I had him, even briefly. She has hated me since.”

“And courtesans…?” Steve wasn’t quite sure how to frame this inquiry.

“Full of questions today,” Loki observed kindly. “Yes, I’ve been with courtesans. They taught me everything I know, except for what I invented. And now I’m passing it all on to you.”

Steve rolled over and kissed him long and lasciviously, taking his time to explore Loki’s mouth. The kiss left them both a little breathless. “Thank you,” he whispered.

“You’re welcome,” Loki grinned.

*** 

“The night before I changed, before the serum, I confessed to Dr. Erskine. I told him that that sometimes I liked women, but mostly it was men.”

“This was a thing you needed to ‘confess’?” Loki asked, surprised.

“It wasn’t considered right then. It was against the law for two men to make love. Sometimes I wonder if it’s accepted even now.”

“Your Midgard is a backwards realm,” Loki said darkly. “But it is interesting that you, on the edge of getting everything you hoped for—strength, a chance to fight—would put it all in danger to ‘confess’ something that was not asked of you. Why did you do it?”

“If I hadn’t, I would have been telling a lie of omission.”

“A subtle point. But surely your Dr. Erskine made nothing of it, since he gave you what you wanted?”

Steve sighed. “He made something of it. In fact, he almost scrapped the whole project right then and there. He kept saying, ‘But you seemed so perfect for it,’ and ‘I should have known something would be wrong,’ and then he started drinking, and speaking Yiddish, and then he just passed out. He didn’t let me have a drink, and that gave me hope that he had decided to go through with it anyway. I guess I didn’t realize how much pressure the military had put on him about the project.”

“So you passed the lie on to your friend.”

“What do you mean?” Steve sounded startled.

“He in turn lied to the military when he told them you were a suitable subject for their experiment.”

Steve considered. “You’re right,” he said slowly. “I never really thought of it that way.”

“Lies are my specialty.” Loki sounded very pleased with himself.

Steve was silent for a moment. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to ask Loki a question that had been preying on his mind.

“Why do they call you the God of Lies?” he asked. “Have you ever lied to me?”

“It isn’t so much that I lie, as much as it is my skill with words,” Loki said confidentially. “You might have noticed.”

“Yes,” Steve said, feeling on thin ice, “your stories are fascinating.”

“Faint praise!” Loki said sardonically.

“I love your stories,” Steve said, frustrated into being more straightforward, “but what I want to know is if you’ve ever lied to _me_.”

“Aha,” said Loki, “I see. Probably.”

“When?”

“Who knows? Just think of all the times you’ve lied to me.”

“I’ve never lied to you.”

“Never? Not once?”

“Of course not.”

“And I wager you’ll say you would never tell a lie, under any circumstances.”

“That’s right.”

“What if I were your enemy, and you were in my power, and I asked you where your weapon was? Would you tell me truly?”

“No, of course not. I would—”

“You would lie.”

“In that case it wouldn’t really be a lie.”

“It would be expedient, certainly, but it would still be a lie. It’s understandable, that you would lie to save your life.”

“I suppose I would.”

“You wouldn’t lie to keep some good you cherished, as your story just showed. But you lied to your friend Bucky.”

“What?” Steve was really annoyed now. “I never—how do you mean that?”

“You never told him you wanted him—a ‘lie of omission,’ surely?”

“No, of course not. I didn’t have to tell him that. It might have ruined our friendship.”

“Ah, so if telling a truth would change the other person’s behavior, you do not have to tell it? That sounds like a lie to me.”

“I— That is— Damn it, Loki, you’ve got me all confused.”

Loki laughed. “So I have.”

Angry, Steve rolled over on top of Loki and started kissing him hard, mouthing his neck and biting hard enough to leave marks. Loki accepted his homage, tilting his head back to let Steve have his way. Steve was hard now, and his anger gave it an edge. He wanted to take Loki between his hands and fuck him hard. “I just wanted to know if you lied to me,” he murmured. “Why can’t you give me a straight answer?”

Loki hummed in his throat as Steve nipped his shoulder sharply. “Everyone lies, all the time,” he said. “Words are fluid things, opening new worlds every time they are spoken. Who knows what another makes of it when we speak? But actions—”

Rocking his pelvis, he raised his knees to place his feet on the back of Steve’s calves. “This is no lie,” he said, his voice thick with arousal, guiding Steve inside him. His words caught in his throat as he spoke. “Ah, my dear innocent, you’d like to fuck the lies out of me, wouldn’t you?”

Steve moaned. Overcome with sensation, he could barely speak. “Yes,” he said hoarsely.

Loki chuckled softly in the dark. “Well, then, you’d better fuck me harder.”

Steve did.

***

Steve was barely awake when Loki moved his hand down to Steve’s ass and stroked the curve of it, pushing Steve’s leg up and entering him from behind, gently, gradually, stroking Steve’s cock in time with his movements. Steve bent his head back, abandoned to pleasure, feeling Loki’s lips and teeth at his shoulder, moving up his neck to his ear.

“Not so innocent now,” Loki whispered hotly, “but still beautiful.”

All Steve could do in response was moan and reach back to feel the junction of their bodies, making Loki hold him harder, move quicker inside him.

Loki was whispering in his ear. “When I fought you in Stuttgart, I could tell that you were hard inside your stupid, tight uniform. You were hard for me, weren’t you?”

“You saw that?” Steve gasped. “I…I didn’t want—”

“I wanted to grab your cock, make you moan and gasp and submit to me right there on the street, in front of all that crowd of people. If Stark and the woman hadn’t arrived, you know what I would have done?”

“What?” Steve breathed, knowing full well.

“I would have torn your uniform off you and taken you right there, and everyone would have seen how much you wanted me.”

Loki’s words were so close to one of his recurring fantasies that Steve gave up the pretense. “Oh, god,” he choked, “oh, Loki, I want—”

But whatever Steve was about to say he wanted was lost in his gasps of pleasure as he reached his climax. They lay together, with Loki still half-hard inside him.

“Could you really see that I was hard?”

Loki scoffed and stroked his shoulder. “No, my innocent. We were fighting. It was dark.”

“Then how did you—”

“I guessed.”

“But you said you saw—”

“I lied.”

Steve thought a moment about what he was about to say, but said it anyway. “I didn’t want you then, you know.”

“Yes, you did.”

“No, I didn’t. You were my enemy.”

Loki laughed. “You were fascinated in spite of yourself.”

“I was appalled at what you had just done, at what you were saying to those people.”

It was Loki’s turn to pause. “Yes,” he said, speaking softly into Steve’s ear, “I’m sure you were appalled. But you were also hard.”

***

It was so dark in the room Steve couldn’t see Loki’s face, but his voice was clear and solid in Steve’s ear.

“When I fell from the Bifrost, I thought I would be able to open a ‘way,’ to choose where to go. I thought the realms were all before me.”

“What happened?”

“In the space between the realms, there are passageways that open and close. Some are subtle, known only to the adept. Others open and close as on great waves, as the sea has its tides. Those cannot be resisted by any force in the universe.”

“Wormholes,” Steve whispered, trying to imagine.

“Before I had fallen very far, I was taken by one of these, which swept me away I knew not where. It was dark, without a glimmer of light, and cold as the empty void of space. It was filled with rocks and debris from destroyed planets and extinguished stars that pummeled my body as I fell. Unable to see, at the mercy of forces I could not control, I spun through darkness. My eyes, straining to see, saw instead visions of Thor, and Frigga, and Odin. I railed at them, told them my grievances. Finally, I was there so long, a thing happened that I thought could never come: I longed for Asgard, for my home and my so-called family. It lasted so long, I thought I might spend my life there in that conduit, to emerge eons later, old and wizened and powerless. But my fate lay elsewhere.”

Loki was silent so long, Steve thought he would not continue. “So, how did you find the Chitauri?”

Loki laughed, but not with humor. “They found me. When the passageway let me go, I landed hard on solid rock. I was blind, beaten, gibbering nonsense. Because of the cold I had reverted to my Jotunn form.”

“How is...how is that possible?” Steve asked hesitantly.

“The color of my skin, and its warmth, come from an unbreakable spell cast upon me by Odin when I was an innocent babe. He wove it into my being, like a second skin. In extreme cold, the spell thins, and the blue skin and red eyes show through. Had I not been Jotunn—had I not possessed resistance to the deadly cold of space—I would have died in that tunnel.”

“So if you went outside into the snow, would you...?”

Loki scoffed softly. “Perhaps if I were frozen deep in a sheet of ice—as you were—perhaps then you would see me Jotunn. But I don’t think that all the ice and snow on Midgard could thin the spell that Odin cast.

“The Chitauri are scavengers; you can see that in their hybrid bodies. Their idea of the universe and its inhabitants is fragmentary. All they see comes from somewhere else, and all of it is damaged, and yet hardy enough to reach their realm. They scour space for things and beings, and each piece of flotsam they find is incorporated into their essence. In the remote void at the edge of the universe where they live, only a few, rejected scraps filter down from the inhabited parts of the Nine Realms: discarded weapons, bits of half-destroyed ships or ruined cities, and hapless wrecks like myself.

“They had never seen a creature like me before, and so they took me to their god: a being named Thanos, an old Titan of Midgard. Eons before, new gods had displaced his kind, tossing them into the void like rubbish. Only Thanos had survived, and so, of course, he worshipped Death—not his own, but the death of every other living thing. He ruled the Chitauri, those patchwork creatures—half flesh, half metal—those living machines, hiding himself away until he had gained enough power to cleanse the universe of everything not like himself—that is, of everything.

“I fell into his power.”

Loki sighed. Steve strained to see his face in the inky darkness, but he saw nothing, not a gleam. “He didn’t kill you,” Steve said softly.

“Oh, no,” Loki answered, his voice harsh now, “he saw my use immediately, and so of course he began by taking me apart.” Steve heard him shift on the bed, moving uneasily as if his body, too, was remembering the pain. “He broke me.” Loki’s voice was barely audible.

Steve was afraid to breathe, to speak. When he and Loki first met, this was exactly what Steve had hoped to coax from him, but now Loki’s words filled him with anxiety and horror. He wanted to deny them. “No,” he said carefully, “how could he? You’re so strong. You could have used your magic. What about—”

“Nothing availed me,” Loki said firmly, turning towards Steve and cupping his chin gently in one hand, as if he heard the empathy in Steve’s voice and accepted it. “He crushed me, body and soul, and then he healed me with the scepter, put it in my hand as I knelt, swearing fealty to him. Through the Tesseract he sent me to Midgard. I wanted nothing better than to do his will in all things. I was his creature.”

“Does Thor know? Did you tell him any of this?” Steve slid a hand up Loki’s arm to his shoulder, buried it deep in his hair.

“No.” There was a silence. “You can tell him hereafter, when it’s all over. When I’m gone. Tell him then.”

“You mean when you’re in prison?” Steve scoffed, trying to break the dark mood. “Don’t talk as if you’re going to die there. You’ll live ages longer than I will, and I’ll find a way to get you out.”

In the grey predawn light Steve could barely see Loki’s face now, and it looked lost, infinitely lost. “Don’t be so sure,” Loki breathed.

***

“Why did you stop visiting me? There was a time, just before the Dark Elves invaded Asgard, when I didn’t see you for a couple of months.”

“Ah, yes.”

“So, why?”

“Because I visited you one afternoon and saw you pleasuring yourself.”

“No. What did you… No, you made that up.”

“I didn’t. You were lying naked on your bed, with your eyes closed and your hands like this. You didn’t know I was there.”

“You saw that? But you never came that early before. That’s embarrassing. I wasn’t in the habit of doing that. It’s just that I’d been thinking of you all day, and I couldn’t…”

“What did you say? You’d been thinking of…me?”

“Who did you think I was thinking of?”

“Your friend Bucky, or that woman.”

Steve was silent for a moment, thinking about what Loki was admitting. “I never thought of them that way anymore,” he said slowly, “after you and I became friends.” His voice faltered on the next words. “I started thinking of you.”

“Had I known…” Loki started slowly, and fell silent. Steve waited, hearing his own breath. “No. It could only have happened the way it did,” he said finally.

“What were you going to say?” Steve asked, disappointed.

“Had I known then, I would have come for you, and I would have found a way to make you hate me. I almost did it when I finally did come. But after spending all that time on the throne of Asgard thinking of you, and then hearing you say we could have been lovers…” Loki stopped talking, and Steve waited again, hoping he would go on. “Does that mean, in Stuttgart, you…”

“No,” Steve said quickly. “You were my enemy. Fighting does…that…to me sometimes, but I didn’t think of you that way. I didn’t want you.”

“Until when?”

“Until I listened to your stories. Until you told me something about yourself.” 

“So I won you,” Loki said, with something like pleasure in his voice. “I seduced you without even touching you.”

“And then you almost threw it away. You humiliated me. I left the Tower and came up here to think about things.”

“And what did you think that made you decide not to hate me?” Loki was trying to seem casual, but Steve knew him well enough now that he could tell how very interested Loki actually was in his reply.

“Thor said you forced people to have sex in Asgard. But you refused me. It made me wonder why. All I could think of was that you…cared too much about me to do that.”

“I had thought to spare you.” Loki shifted impatiently. “And as for as what Thor said, as he knows well, there are always people who want to fuck the prince,” he said harshly, “who follow you around making doe eyes and showing up everywhere you go. It made me angry. I was rough with a few of them.”

“You raped them,” Steve said flatly.

“No,” said Loki. “I’ve never raped anyone. I spread those rumors myself.”

“Why?” Steve asked incredulously. “Why would you want anyone to think you were a rapist?”

Loki shrugged. “To scare away the fools who were mooning after me. To annoy Odin.”

“All that to annoy Odin?” Steve’s tone was lighter, almost playful, happy as he was to hear Loki say he had never raped anyone.

“You don’t know what he did to me,” Loki’s eyes lit up with anger, “the way he treated me. I was never a son, I was a bargaining chip that had lost its use. The only reason he didn’t throw me out earlier was his own pride. That’s why he keeps me in his dungeon as a so-called prince instead of a lowly prisoner. It would wound his pride to admit his judgment was so bad. And if the people knew he had brought home a Jotunn child, had raised him as a presumptive heir to the Asgardian throne—” Loki stopped as if suddenly aware that he was starting to rant. “Odin never admits that he was wrong. It doesn’t matter who has to suffer for it.”

Steve didn’t know what to say. Nothing would ever make Loki forget his grievance against the one who had raised him, or his resentment against Thor. “My father died in the First World War,” Steve said tentatively. “I never knew him. I always wanted to.”

“Perhaps you’re lucky,” Loki said darkly. “My real father abandoned me to die. My adoptive father—my jailor—lied to me and prepared me for a future he wasn’t willing to give, and now he wants to keep me in a cell for the rest of my life. I’ve had enough of fathers.”

The great sadness at the core of Steve’s life had always been that he had no memory of the proud young father who had held him in his arms a few times before going off to die as a soldier in the fields of France. He understood that Laufey and Odin had done terrible things, but Loki’s words dismissing all fathers profoundly shocked and saddened him.

“If Thanos controlled you, you shouldn’t go back to prison. Can’t Odin see that? He must have had some affection for you once. Can’t he—”

“Odin doesn’t want to see anything about me. Just by existing, I am a reproach to him.”

“Maybe I can convince him.”

“I don’t want you anywhere near him,” Loki said fiercely, gripping Steve’s shoulders hard enough to hurt.

“But if Thor won’t take your case to him, then how—”

Loki cut him off. “Don’t you understand?” he said, his eyes dark and haunted. “As far as Odin is concerned, there _is_ no case. I did those things. _I_ did them. I thought of the scheme, I planned it. _I_ controlled your Hawkeye and Erik Selvig. _I_ cut the eyeball out of a living man.”

“Loki…look, we don’t blame them for what they did. Why should we blame you?”

“No! There was a moment on the Tower—Thor stopped me. He made me look at the devastation. He asked me to end the battle, to close the rift. I understood him, and I could have stopped it. I could have, but instead I let it go on. ‘Sentiment,’ I said to him. ‘Sentiment!’ Thanos threatened me, tortured me—all that is true. But once he set me in motion, I didn’t stop. I didn’t want to stop.” He looked Steve straight in the eyes and spoke emphatically. “I wanted to rule.”

Steve was quiet for a moment. “No one deserves to stay in prison all those thousands of years.”

Loki stroked Steve’s shoulders gently where a moment ago he had gripped them hard. “Just let happen what is going to happen,” he murmured. “We’ve had our time. Do not reproach yourself, and do not interfere. There’s nothing you can do to change what will be.”

His words gave Steve a chill that he couldn’t quite figure out. Loki’s new fatalism worried him. Since when did Loki give up? Since when did he not do all he could to win, to escape? Maybe there was something about this situation that Steve didn’t understand.


	4. Chapter 4

Steve awoke slowly in the dark to Loki’s touch. Loki was kissing and mouthing Steve’s thighs, running his tongue along each muscle, smoothing his fingers in wide, gentle circles on the skin.

“Loki,” Steve said languorously.

“Shhh,” Loki whispered, and his whisper was no louder than a breath, “let me do this.”

Steve stretched and murmured, and laid a hand gently on Loki’s head to feel him move. Sighing, Steve relaxed against the sheets, wishing he could watch as Loki caressed him, but it was too dark for even his enhanced eyesight to make out more than a dark shadow against the overcast sky.

When Loki reached his groin, Steve expected that hot mouth to take his cock, but after a cursory touch, he moved on. Steve moaned and thrust instinctively into the air, feeling Loki lick and mouth his chest in great, voracious mouthfuls. Loki’s tongue circled a nipple, then pressed it gently between his lips and moved on.

Loki took his mouth, kissing him deeply, hotly, and Steve, made desperate with longing, Reached up to hold him, trying to pull their bodies together.

“Not yet,” Loki whispered. “Do I have to hold you down to do what I want?”

“You have to hold me down,” Steve echoed hoarsely. Loki’s long fingers found Steve’s wrists and closed around them. Steve tried their strength, as he always did, which provoked his lust further. He couldn’t stop the sounds of desire that came from his throat until Loki took his mouth again.

Writhing with need when Loki broke the kiss, Steve heard his quiet laughter. “Hold still, my innocent, and you’ll get everything you want.”

He tried to obey, tried to stop thrusting upwards, his body seeking the stimulation that Loki had denied him. He felt suspended on the edge of great pleasure, but unable to reach it, which felt something like pain, with an edge of fear, and the humiliation of having asked to be restrained, exactly in order to be suspended in this place. To have pleasure given him, instead of taking it, this was what he craved.

“Patience. Patience, my favorite, my chosen one,” Loki murmured, and the warmth of his voice, the names he used, made Steve want him all the more.

He couldn’t see what Loki was doing, but he felt heat press against him, slide into him. He cried out and thrashed blindly, overcome, and yet craving more stimulation.

“So greedy,” Loki said softly, his voice gruff with arousal, “and so beautiful. Do you remember the second time I came to you? You were naked as we spoke, under the bedclothes, and I wanted you. I wanted you, and I couldn’t have you.” He started to move, slowly at first, and Steve cried out again. “This is what I imagined all those times, when we talked,” Loki went on, “when we were speaking together, so close, speaking about our lives so intimately, and yet so far apart.”

Loki paused, holding himself completely still, except that he was trembling, and Steve felt it, and knew that Loki needed this as much as he did—the sex, and the closeness, all of it—the two of them together in the dark, these words of confession between them when their bodies were joined, moving towards and holding off their pleasure.

Then Loki moved on him faster, crying out just as Steve reached his peak. His arms were free now, so he embraced Loki hard around the back as he climaxed, one hand threaded through Loki’s hair, and, from a place that had never spoken before, he choked out, “I love you. Loki, I love you.” Loki made a sound like a sob and held him hard, but it couldn’t have been a sob, because Loki didn’t ever lose control like that. Steve felt a deep sense of contentment spread through him. This was where he had always needed to be.

***

Steve awoke early to the sound of thunder and realized he had heard the Bifrost. Loki was standing by the window, fully dressed for the first time in six weeks. Jumping from the bed, Steve joined him at the window.

“What’s happening?” he asked, his chest turning cold with fear.

“They’re here,” Loki said simply.

“I won’t let them take you,” Steve said.

“You’ll have to.”

“I won’t. I don’t have to let them in. I can—”

Loki turned towards him. “You can’t do anything against them. They’ll have orders to do whatever they have to do, and if that includes fighting you, they’ll do it.”

“No,” Steve insisted, pulling on his clothes, “they have no right—”

“Listen to me!” Loki took him roughly by the arms. “This had to end eventually. We’ve had our time. I won’t watch you die.” Downstairs, heavy steps resounded on the wooden porch and a knock came at the door. “Answer it,” Loki said coolly, letting him go.

Steve went down the stairs slowly and opened the door. Thor stood there with the large, bearded Asgardian who had dragged Loki off the ice over a month before. Steve went outside onto the porch and closed the door behind him.

“Thor,” Steve said, nodding.

“Captain,” Thor greeted him impassively. “You know why we’re here.”

“Maybe you’d better tell me,” Steve replied, standing in front of the door and folding his arms across his chest.

“We’re here for Loki,” the bearded man said gruffly.

Steve considered him. “You must be Volstagg.”

The warrior looked startled. “Have you heard of my deeds?”

“You and Loki and Thor killed a troll in Iceland.”

Volstagg’s eyes grew vague as he glanced at Thor. “Was Loki there?”

Thor turned on him angrily. “Why do none of you remember Loki's deeds?”

“His deeds? You mean his tricks, his lies? His betrayals? Making good men _argr_?”

“Hold your tongue! You insult our host.”

Puzzled, Steve met Thor’s eyes. “I have no idea what you're talking about.”

“You see? No one cares about _ergi_ anymore. Even Odin himself....”

“You don't care because you are _argr_ too! Everyone knew what you and Loki did.”

Steve suddenly understood. “Is homosexuality a…problem in Asgard?”

“It used to be a great crime,” Thor explained, “but most of us are more enlightened now.” He glared at Volstagg. “Why did you come with me?” he muttered. “I should have done this alone.”

“I know how that would have ended. With Loki free again. We know how it is with the two of you.”

“I am sworn to do the All-Father’s bidding. Do you question my honor?”

“Of course not, but you have feelings for him the rest of us do not. You still call him ‘brother.’ How you can still be so blind after all these years?”

“Enough!” Thor turned towards Steve. “Captain, please excuse our rudeness. We are here to take Loki. Odin has ordered him back to Asgard.”

“Isn’t it up to me to say when Loki’s asylum ends?” Steve asked defiantly.

“I’m afraid not,” Thor said. “Asylum is granted only at the All-Father’s pleasure. I’m surprised he let it go on as long as he did.”

“What about the things you told me? About Thanos, and the possibility that Loki was under his control when he waged war on New York?”

“What?” Volstagg said indignantly. “Now he claims to have been forced?”

“It is possible,” Thor said uncomfortably. “If it were up to me, I would think about shortening Loki’s sentence. But I am not the king.” He held up a hand to stop Steve, who was about to interrupt him. “Only Odin can decide these things. Only he.”

As an Avenger, Steve had fought with Thor as a trusted ally, but now he was starting to realize Thor’s limitations as a brother, and as a man. Thor loved rules, felt comfortable within their confines. He had trouble thinking without them.

“Then leave Loki here with me,” Steve said. “It will be a kind of house arrest. After you’ve found Thanos, you can decide whether it’s right for Loki to go back to prison or not.”

Behind Steve, the door opened slowly. Loki stood there, a few steps back from the sill. “So, brother, you’ve come.”

Thor took a step towards him. “Loki, you must come with us. No tricks.”

Loki chuckled softly, and Steve was horrified to see how much he looked again like the man who had stood on Stark Tower and declared himself a king.

“You just can’t stop running the All-Father’s petty errands, can you, brother?” Loki’s face was painfully drawn, his expression contemptuous. He suddenly looked older, worn with care and hatred.

“I must obey him,” Thor said stiffly. “You escaped from his prison and you have always known you must go back.”

Loki cocked his head to one side. His eyes were fierce and intent on Thor’s. “And did I walk out of Odin’s prison on my own? Who broke me out, when he had need of my skills?”

“You promised to go back when our task was finished,” Thor retorted, his tone starting to tip over into anger.

“And you believed me?” Loki’s smile was too wide, too brilliant, and entirely malicious. “What made you think I had any intention of returning?” He took a step forward, but still remained far from the doorway. “Are you truly that stupid, my dear brother? Has spending less time with me weakened your mind?”

Volstagg huffed out a breath and turned to Thor impatiently. “Are you going to listen to this foolishness?” he asked. “Can we not just take him and be on our way?”

“We can,” said Thor, “but the Captain is a comrade in arms, and I do not wish to enter his home against his wishes.”

“But if I refuse, you’ll enter anyway?” Steve asked angrily.

“We will,” Volstagg said firmly.

Thor glared at Volstagg, shaking his head. “We must come in to restrain Loki so that he cannot use his magic. Once we have done that, the women will break the spell that does not allow him to leave.”

“Restrain him?” Steve asked, appalled. “The way you restrained him after the Battle of New York?”

Thor held out his arm to display a thick handful of chains. “Yes.”

“This has become tedious,” Loki said superciliously. “I will go with you, provided you do not try to stop my mouth with that…device.” The word dripped venom, and Steve could tell how much he hated it.

“Very well,” Thor said, relieved. “I will come in and put the restraints on you, if the Captain will allow me.”

“No,” Loki said, “let the mortal put them on me.”

“It is a trick,” Volstagg protested. “Without the gag, he can still pronounce spells, and…”

“And the restraints are bespelled against his magic, and so nothing will happen at all,” Thor said impatiently. “We must return him to prison. There is no need to humiliate him before his friend.”

He handed two pairs of restraints to Steve, who went back inside the house to face Loki.

“Are you sure?” he asked. His heart was pounding madly.

“Yes,” Loki said simply.

“I hate to do this to you,” Steve said, trying not to choke.

“I know. But they will have me one way or another, even if they have to destroy this place and you.”

One pair of restraints fit on Loki’s wrists, the other on his ankles. They were terribly heavy, much heavier than they looked, and Steve imagined as he fastened them on what a burden they would be, both physical and mental, and he mourned his friend already.

When he had finished, he stood and looked into Loki’s face, now so drawn and pale. Taking Loki by the shoulders, Steve kissed him on the mouth. Loki raised his cuffed hands and held Steve's face between them. Steve knew they were giving Volstagg an eyeful, but he really couldn't have cared less.

When the kiss was over, Loki took hold of the front of Steve’s shirt to keep him close. “Mourn me,” he whispered, “but not too long. There are others on your world now with powers. Maybe one of them will be worthy of you.”

“You see?” Volstagg muttered. “He has dishonored you and your friend both.”

“Silence,” Thor said angrily.

“He will be better off dead,” Volstagg muttered.

Steve turned quickly towards him, pulling out of Loki’s grasp. “What did you say?” he asked, his heart in his throat.

“He was just wishing me dead,” Loki said smoothly, “as he has for many years.”

“No,” Steve said slowly, “it was more than that.” He turned again to Loki. “They’re going to kill you,” he whispered, as the realization shuddered through him. “You’ll never reach Asgard.”

“It does not concern you,” Loki said softy. “Leave it.”

“They intend to kill you!” Steve said louder, his heart pounding wildly. He spun towards Thor. “How can you do this to your own brother?”

“I have no intention to kill Loki.” Thor said, puzzled. “I am sworn to bring him safely to Asgard.”

“Then swear again now,” Steve said urgently, “swear you’ll bring him there safely.”

“Steve, no! Do not do this.” Steve heard Loki, but somehow his protests didn’t register, so intent was Steve on preventing this injustice.

“I swear by my honor,” Thor said easily, “and I swear by Mjolnir, that I will bring Loki safely to Asgard.”

Steve felt Loki grab his shoulder from behind, heard him groan. “No!” Loki said, pulling desperately at Steve’s arm. “I told you not to interfere.”

“But—” Turning, Steve looked into Loki’s eyes, and suddenly he understood. “No,” he said, “no, I can’t let you die. I’ll come to you in prison, I’ll find a way to get you out. I won’t let—”

Thor had turned to Volstagg and with dawning suspicion in his eyes. “And now you— swear, as I have.”

“I don’t need to swear,” Volstagg muttered darkly.

Thor scowled at him. “Tell me truly, my old friend, do you intend to murder Loki on the way to Asgard? Did Odin ask you to do something that he didn’t tell me?”

“Thor, do not ask—”

“Tell me truthfully!” Thor said again, louder this time.

“I have my orders,” Volstagg snapped peevishly.

“From Odin?” Thor insisted.

Volstagg sighed. “He told me to kill Loki if it was possible without fighting you.”

“That is now impossible,” Thor said firmly. “Swear you will not harm him.”

Volstagg breathed out hard in anger. “I swear by my honor that I will not kill or harm Loki. I swear I will bring him safely to Odin’s prison. Does that satisfy you?” he snarled. The high color of his face revealed his embarrassment at being caught out by Steve and Thor.

Steve turned to look at Loki’s face and was shocked by what he saw there. “Damn you,” Loki said wrathfully. “Why did you meddle in things that are not your affair?”

“Not my affair?” Steve turned on him incredulously. “You knew! You guessed what would happen. And you lied to me. All along, you’ve been lying to me.”

Loki’s eyes were empty, shuttered. “Did you think I would not?” he asked, with a small, cold smile.

His words stabbed Steve to the heart. “After everything we’ve been to each other,” he began, “you—”

“You saw me. I have let you _see_ me,” Loki said bitterly, “and yet you still betrayed me.”

“I saved you!” Steve said wildly, trying to make him see. “They were going to—”

“I know!” Loki shouted. “I welcomed it! I can’t go back to that cell, not again, not for the rest of my life.” He pulled at the restraints on his wrists, twisting them as if they would break and let him go.

Thor stepped over the threshold and took Loki by the arm. “It is time to end this,” he said sternly.

“Loki, I'll find a way,” Steve said urgently. “I’ll come for you. I’ll—”

“You won’t,” Loki said violently, as Thor dragged him to the spot where the Bifrost would take them. “You innocent fool, you’ll never see me again. Years after you die, I will still be in that cell!”

Steve had to close his eyes when the Bifrost slammed down, and when he opened them, the Asgardians were gone. His legs gave way, and he found himself sitting on the porch steps, his head in his hands.

Hadn’t he done the right thing? Wasn’t it always right to save a life? Or had he saved Loki for his own selfish reasons, because he couldn’t have said good-bye, knowing that Loki would die a moment after? Maybe he should have respected Loki’s wishes, but he couldn’t. He just couldn’t. Out of weakness, out of love, he had, perhaps, done a terrible thing. Despair welled up in his chest. He had hardly ever felt worse in his life. Now, somehow, he had to do what he had promised Loki. He had to fix this.

 Methodically, hollowly, his heart full of pain, he changed the sheets on the bed, did a load of laundry, washed the dishes, and packed his duffle. He cleaned the ashes out of the stove and shut the flue, and then he closed the shutters all over the house. Finally, he got his bike out of the shed and headed for Stark Tower.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll start posting Part III very soon!


End file.
